The present invention generally relates to the field of children's play structures. More particularly, the present invention relates to a storybook kit for a child's play structure, and related method of assembling the same.
It has been a tradition for hundreds of years to tell stories to young children as part of a child's learning process. Originally stories were told orally and passed from one generation to the next. More recently, printed storybooks have become very popular as a means of telling stories to children. Traditional children's books consist of painted or drawn pictures printed on two dimensional pages and combined with text. Pop-up flaps have been included in some new books to add some three dimensionality to the story telling experience. However, the concept of providing a large scale three dimensional representation for a story has not been developed to date.
Others have proposed structures that help a child participate in creative play such as U.S. Pat. No. 3,363,360 which discloses a doll house structure that includes additions to the walls that can represent parts of a house such as a kitchen stove. U.S. Pat. No. 5,733,165 discloses a play structure that includes additional play figures that relate to play surfaces on the interior of the structure. U.S. Pat. No. 5,004,445 discloses a series of shapes of home furniture and kitchen appliances, that when opened, reveal a miniature environment relating to that particular item. For example, the side of a play bed structure can fold out to reveal an entire miniature bedroom. U.S. Pat. No. 5,352,149 discloses a children's play structure with interchangeable scenes. This patent shows a play structure where graphic elements can be added to the interior walls adapting the space to a classroom, or a kitchen, or the like.
However, none of the above-described patents, or other patents in this category, describe a novel approach to story telling where a portion of a play structure represents a page or pages of a storybook and by crawling or walking from one play structure to the next, a child can travel through a story in a three dimensional manner.
Accordingly, there is a continuing need for a novel approach to story telling, which incorporates a play structure which represents the story or illustrations within the storybook, and enable the child to crawl, walk, or otherwise play within the structure so as to mimic and play out themes of the story. The present invention fulfills these needs, and provides other related advantages.